Cold Storage of Winter Clothes

Monday, October 2, 1911: It is beginning to get cold. Am thinking about my hat and coat, which are in the store as yet, but it doesn’t do very much good anyway.

Photo source: Practical Cold Storage (1905)

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

A hundred years ago people sometimes took their winter coats, and other wool and fur garments, to a cold storage facility. This was done to help ensure that the clothes won’t be damaged by moths during the warm weather months.

I don’t understand exactly how cold storage rooms were kept cold, but the rooms probably were cooled by pipes filled with brine or ammonia. Compression machines may have been used. There were a number of different methods described in a 1905 book, but a common method is described below:

In this system, the ammonia gas is driven off from aqua ammonia under pressure, by heating; the gas is liquefied by cooling, and the refrigerating effect obtained by expanding the liquid ammonia thus obtained though pipes surrounded by the medium to be cooled.